Thereafter, she has a dream of a blonde girl in the house, having her hair brushed by a woman.Īt a village festival, Anna gets into an altercation with a local girl, who makes fun of Anna’s blue eyes, an unusual feature she can’t explain because she doesn’t know who her biological family are. Her foster mother sends her to a seaside town for the summer to stay with her relatives, and Anna soon spies a dilapidated manor house across the way. Thinking they only care for her for the money, she pulls back further until she collapses at school. She’s distant and hasn’t connected with them, a relationship made worse when she finds out the couple receive a stipend from the government to look after her.

The story-transposed from Norfolk, England in the novel to Sapporo, Japan in the film-follows Anna, an introverted 12-year-old girl living with foster parents.

Robinson, the movie has a Gothic ghost story feel, while not being a horror story in any real outward way. A lot of that comes from the source material based on the novel of the same name by English author Joan G.

When Marnie Was There, while keeping a lot of the hallmarks of a Miyazaki film-young female protagonist, otherworldly adventure, magical realism-but makes it much more contemplative, and layers mystery on top of the magical. Were Marnie not already in production, it probably wouldn’t have happened.Īrrietty was successful in that it captured the spirit and look of a Miyazaki movie, but for Yonebayashi not to merely be a carbon copy of his mentor, he’d have to change things up a bit. Hiromasa Yonebayashi had already stepped up in a big way with The Secret World of Arrietty, so why wouldn’t they give him another shot at directing? It was a pretty weird time at Ghibli, however the studio was in the process of powering down, at least for the interim, following the announcement that founder and creative driving force Hayao Miyazaki was to retire following his ninth Ghibli feature, The Wind Rises, and the feature production arm of the studio would go on hiatus. It’s a somber, melancholic longing for the past, but a big step toward the future. (If you’d like to read my thoughts on literally every other Studio Ghibli films, click the links for Miyazaki Masterclass, Takahata Textbook, and Ghibli Bits.) And, fittingly, not only is it our final film in this series, it’s the final feature film produced by Studio Ghibli as a solo, independent entity. Well, friends, it was a short jaunt, but we’ve reached the final film in our series looking at the Studio Ghibli films not directed by its two founding directors.

When marnie was there house